Call of Duty is trying something new with DMZ. It's a server wipe of faction tiers (i.e., missions completed) and player inventory, which is common in this style of RPG-style shooter, but new in Call of Duty.

The official announcement (opens in new tab) hides this under the news that new missions will be available in Season 2, optimistically calling the wipe a "refresh of current faction mission progress and inventory (contraband and keys) reset." This is a major balancing of the mode's AI and an acknowledgment that the faction mission difficulty curve was "too aggressive for many players" and will be smoothed out.

But it's the progression wipes that are getting all the attention, with CODbro tweeting about these changes, "Casual players will be fucked!" and nothing better to start the week than to send out an angry tweet.

Filthy casual players always lose out. Meanwhile, Grizzviollent modestly warns (open in new tab) that "Infinity Ward's reputation may never recover from this decision." Some players were more precise about why this is annoying. Duke Skymocker wrote (opens in new tab), "To be clear, the plan for CoD Season 2 is to reset the DMZ faction mission progress, which means my friends and I will waste about 300-400 hours to unlock the second insured slot." (opens in new tab). This is like being "fooled once." We are not grinding out missions to unlock the same shit again"

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However, it is always easy to find COD players complaining about something, and there are many more reasonable responses: server wipes are common in games like DMZ, the best example being "Escape from Tarkov."

DMZ's use of games like "Tarkov" as It has always been clear that DMZ is modeled after games like "Tarkov" and is an attempt to make the best parts of that game available to more players. In the case of Tarkov, the player base is somewhat hardcore, tending to play Tarkov as their main game and welcoming the opportunity to play a better game again (Tarkov has a player's lair from which it is fun to start over, but DMZ has no equivalent)

Warz.

Since Warzone has a much broader appeal than Tarkov, the results here are more far-reaching and will arguably hit less picky players harder. For example, I haven't cleared the DMZ faction path yet, but it's a little annoying that what I've done will soon be gone.

It's a horse's ear reminder. These games consume a huge amount of time, and if a group of players are invested, such a decision would result in a huge loss of group time. Some may have the time to play the game over and over again, but others do not.

I can't speak for others, but the difference for me is that Tarkov's wipes tend to rekindle my interest; hearing about DMZ doesn't draw me back the same way, but maybe that's why the missions and difficulty levels need to be revisited. In any case, the wipe will take place on February 15, so there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth and "What has greedy Activision done!" Let's be prepared for the appearance of the astonished-looking Youtubers who will be saying.